president and congress over raising the debt ceiling. >> july, 2011 with budget and debt ceiling negotiations stalled, leaders from both parties tried to force a compromise and now bob woodward spoke, the price of politics details a white house idea to guarantee that their plan would lead to results down the road. at 2:30 p.m., jack lew and rob nabors went to meet with the chief. and we had an idea for a trigger, lew said. what's the idea, reid said skeptically. sequestration, it was a bomb no one wanted to drop and an action forcing event. >> we're going to be able to come to some agreement with the white house and end this impasse. >> we're been willing to say that there could be a sequestration as long as it included some revenue. >> and the automatic cuts would slash defense and domestic spending, both sides claim victory. >> 98% of what i wanted. i'm pretty happy. >> and leaders of both parties in both chambers have reached an agreement. it establishes a bipartisan committee of congress to report back by november. tough cuts that both parties would find objectionable would automatically

washington of wildly overhyping everything we do. this is not like the debt ceiling or even the fiscal cliff. this is not doomsday even if it does happen. it's just stupid and we shouldn't do it. >> ezra, a couple of things here. first of all, for a long time, the stock market and the economy, as from the perspective of working people, have been at least two different things, correct? one thing, you can see the stock market doing fine. that might have a lot more to do with china than what is to happen march 1st. secondly, let's say nothing happens. the unemployment rate is stuck around 8%. this is a pretty lousy time for nothing to happen. in fact, if you look at the cbo projections, the projection with the sequester taking effect is for the unemployment rate to be 7.9% the first half of this year, 8% for the second half of this year. so, basically stuck at a place that's really very disadvantageous for so many workers. >> jared, let me interrupt this colloquy here and ask you, jared, we know that there are other looming fiscal fights, the march 27th deadline for the continuing resolution, b

, it's not a debt ceiling, it just begins on march 1st. it doesn't mean anything gigantic happens. the cuts will be spread out over the course of a year. you don't make them all at once, but it's bad. it's a bad way to run a government, bad way to cut spending. jared will tell you he thinks the gdp numbers will be revised up, and i think he might be right, but from what we saw, we had a shrinkage in the fourth quarter of 2012, first time in years. that's the first step towards a recession. we had very, very weak policy throughout the course of the recession, in large part because we've been cutting too much from spending, basically, from 2009. so to do a big cut of a size that nobody expected to actually go into effect, it's bad management for the macro economy, for large programs, of course, but that said and the recent notes of the market freaking out, it is not doomsday. we have a tendency in washington of wildly overhyping everything we do. this is not like the debt ceiling or even the fiscal cliff. this is not doomsday even if it does happen. it's just stupid and we shouldn't do i